


The Princess Encounters an Otter with Twenty-Four Heads

by Morbane



Category: The Hog Bridegroom (Romanian Fairy Tale)
Genre: Constructive Criticism Welcome, Gen, Mythical Beings & Creatures, Otters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-13
Updated: 2018-05-13
Packaged: 2019-05-06 03:23:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14633052
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Morbane/pseuds/Morbane
Summary: An episode from an epic journey (with otters).





	The Princess Encounters an Otter with Twenty-Four Heads

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Gehayi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gehayi/gifts).



> The delightful tale upon which this is based [can be found here](http://www.maerchenlexikon.de/texte/te441-003.htm).
> 
> Thank you to Rosencrantz for looking this over!

When the lark and the princess had travelled for a month of Sundays, a month of Fridays, and a month of Wednesdays, they came to a rocky coast. The road, or the closest thing they had to one, followed a tidal river down through steep cliffs to the sea.

"Here we must build a craft to cross the bay," explained the lark; for they sought a cave entrance further along the coast. It gaped above the water, its opening placed low in a steep cliff that the princess dared not descend on foot, where the lark had only at great peril reached before by air - the winds that came from the sea were capricious and had nearly dashed him against the cliff a dozen times.

The princess was quite willing to make a raft, if the lark would only show her how. This he did: the lark's knowledge of plants was quite wonderful. He was able to help her find thick, strong stems to bundle up together, into a wide, thick plank-like craft with uplifted ends, and long, broad rushes with which she could tie the reeds together and hold them fast - and whose sap when cut did almost as well as glue to bind it all together.

Her first attempt, while instructive, was unsuccessful. They had dried their reeds, but not long enough, so that instead of being stiff and full of air, they were heavy and pliant. Once on the water, the reeds soon bent in the middle and sank; and so they learned from this and tried again. (The lark was a good teacher, but he was an indifferent textile artist, as larks are wont to build light, fragile nests, resting on the ground, and do not aspire to the covered-over constructions of their relations. He and the princess were in the position of reinventing the weave, which was vexatious to them both.)

Still, as their journey went, it was a pleasant interlude. The estuary valley was a lonely but a beautiful place. There were eels in the river and berries on the bushes; they dug for tubers and collected clams. There was much for them to hunt, and nothing hunted them, and when it rained and the wind howled in the third week of their stay, they propped up the first failed boat and made a passable shelter of it.

The second boat floated handily, and the princess tried it on the river. How pleased she was to sail towards the bay!

She was not afraid to be swept out to sea, despite her iron girdle, for at that moment the tide was low, and as the river came to join the sea, it frayed out into thin braids, running across mud and sand.

But at that very moment that her craft came to rest where river became rivulets, a high, eerie whistling went across the valley, and the lark, too late, remembered a danger.

They had been lulled by the peace of the valley - and, too, the lark especially had been lulled by its change. When he had last passed this way, the clams and fish had been scarce, and the eels had appeared only upstream of the estuary. Even the insects had been hard to come by, because the river mouth had been the haunt of many other mouths - a bevy of otters.

It was the whistling of otters that the lark heard now.

A dark body, sleek and swift, sped towards the princess and the beached raft - a creature almost as large as the raft itself. But it was alone - and so the lark, suspecting a trick, flew low along and above the scrubby bushes that lined the edge of the estuary, trying to see whence else the voices had come.

The princess leapt onto the sand, clasping in both hands the reed-pole she had been using to steer; and so the otter did not leap at her, but stopped a little ways away and reared up on its hind paws to look at her. When the lark came close enough to hear them, the princess and the otter were already in conversation:

"It is all the same to me where you have come from, and why you have come, and where you are going," the otter said, "but no one stays in my valley, nor leaves it either, and leaves me hungry."

And indeed the otter did look very hungry, and was eyeing the princess with bright and greedy eyes.

The princess said quickly, "Well! if it is the custom in these parts that guests should feed their hosts, then I will share my stores with you and cook with you tonight, and we shall part amicably on the morrow."

"We shall see," said the otter sulkily, "if I am hungry in the morning."

But since the princess had offered to meet its conditions, it could not very well protest further, and so it led her along the shore to its den. They went slowly, since the princess would not leave her raft behind but insisted on dragging it along the sand to where the tide would not rise snatch it from her.

They went slowly, but the lark found nothing to complain about, for this allowed him to dart back and forth as though he were nothing but an ordinary bird, seeking his supper in the bugs that flitted about the sand - and nor did the otter complain, for although it had pointed out their destination, it also made darting trips here and there, at one moment over a sand dune, at another climbing a bush.

When it returned from over a sand dune, the princess could not stifle a shriek.

"Your head!" she said.

"Oh," the otter said casually, "It is my turn to go about, and our third head's turn to keep watch." And the lark could see that the otter had changed - its whiskers were longer, its eyes were larger, and, strangest of all, where the fur of its body met the fur of its neck, the colour lightened a shade.

The astonished princess said nothing further, and soon they reached the otter's den. The otter whistled, and back came a host of whistles - a gale - whistles for at least ten otters, far more than an echo could allow.

The otter's den was a hollowed-out bank, but here and there, where it was propped up by the trunk of an old tree or covered over with dead rushes, light and air could pass freely, and so the lark hopped up - as best he could; with his lame leg, not all perches suited him - to peer through.

What should he see but a dozen gazes crossing the space within!

A dozen heads - or maybe more - were placed around the space - and looked, and spoke, as though each were an independent creature.

But each one lacked a body.

If the lark made a sound of surprise, it was covered by that made by the princess. Although she and the lark had seen many strange sights on their journey, the last never quite prepared them for the next.

"Pardon me, my host," she said, as politely as she could, "but what is this enchantment?"

A head placed on the mantel answered her, and the lark observed that it although it could move its eyes and its mouth, it could not swivel about, but must face in the direction where it had been placed. "Enchantment indeed," it grumbled.

"Not content with our natural state, Saint Monday, who travels about the world and is always found where she's not wanted, came upon us and decided that our appetite was too great, for we had eaten this beach to bone and treated travellers as our tribute. So she compelled us, who were twenty-four, to share one stomach, and only one of us may use our body at any one time, to gather and hunt our food. Can you think of anything so cruel!"

The princess answered politely, and shortly asked to go out again to gather food. The otters agreed to this, but warned her not to think of slipping away and breaking her bargain - "for as many heads as you have seen within, there are the same number of us stationed along the shore and in the marsh, to spot or to sniff out what flies or crawls or swims on its way to our supper, and to raise the alarm."

Giving assurances, she went out.

For a while she went up and down the shore, and dug in the muddy river edge, and gathered the wizened, bitter fruits that grew nearest the sea. The lark meanwhile flew up and down, until he thought he had spied all of the heads that were nearby, and could approach the princess without being seen.

"I have heard all," he said, "and I have a herb for you: only mix this in with the otters' food, and they will think themselves very ill-used, and will have no appetite to chase after you - as was their bargain."

The princess accepted it with thanks, and tucked it into her clothing, and turned back to the den.

But no trickery was possible when she set about cooking: twenty-four eyes watched her keenly, and the heads whispered among themselves and discussed her actions. Even when the head that was wearing the body went out of the den, it was only a whistle away.

After chopping and stirring for some time, she took the herb out of her clothes, as if casually, and the nearest otter scolded her: "Not that one! Is it some wickedness you intend?" and she had to prettily beg pardon, and say that she had mistook it for another, being unfamiliar with these lands, and toss it outside the den - barely managing to save any - to appease them.

When the food was ready, the otters ate with a will, trading the body between their heads so all could have a bite. "It is not bad," they agreed, though in truth the princess was an indifferent cook, "but it is not enough." And they eyed her hungrily.

"Today I had scarcely the afternoon," the princess protested. "You must give me tomorrow." 

It was easy enough to see that if they ate the princess today, they would in time come to the end of her; but if they let her cook for them again they might still eat her later. So they agreed.

The princess had little choice but to go to sleep; but the lark whistled to her, as they had agreed, to promise that he was watching and would listen for a while to any conspiracy of otters while she slept, and warn her if they changed their minds.

After a while, the lark too slept.

The next day, the princess set to with a will - wading for eels, digging up mushrooms, even taking some early eggs from nests that were no kin of the lark's. She used every bit of craft she had learned in a month of Fridays and half a month of Sundays, and had she been feeding herself and the lark only, the food she gathered would have set her right for many miles. But it was all for the hunger of the otters.

As before, the lark did not approach her at first, but skulked nearby until he was sure he was unseen - for he did not trust the otters not to make a short mouthful of him.

Again, he had an offering.

"See," he said, "I have found wild onions growing. Only cut them as you cook, and the eyes of those who watch you will smart and sting, and you will find it much easier to slip the herb I gave you into the meal."

But the otters, who preferred a diet of meat and fish, had never eaten onions before. They were so suspicious - especially after their eyes began to sting - that they would not eat the princess's offering unless she ate it first, and so she gave up on that plan, and merely made food for them to share.

The meal was a good deal better than the last one, and this time, the heads fought over it - and nothing would do but that the body go out and fetch all of its heads wherever they were stationed on watch, so that each might have a turn - and each head that had not had a turn complained bitterly about the last taking too long.

So with one thing and another, the otters ate up all of the food, and the princess could not very well claim that she had made enough to go around, even though the last head looked very well satisfied when none of the others were looking.

That night when the princess went to sleep, the otters gossiped among themselves.

"We must conspire some way of keeping her here," an otter said.

"We have eaten better," another head argued. "Let us eat her or let her go and take our chances with the next."

But all the other heads shouted her down, and argued that it was not only folly to keep their bargain, but wasteful too, "and we should regret it very much next time we go hungry."

"Perhaps if we eat only a little of her," said an otter with particularly gleaming teeth.

The lark was very alarmed and slept little, but the consensus the otters reached was that threats and tricks would do for now, as long as the princess remained at their service and they need not satisfy their appetite with their own efforts alone.

Luck was with the lark the next day, as he managed to find onions again, and even more of the herb designed to cause sickness of the stomach. He explained to the princess all that he had heard, and she vowed that she would find a way to elude the otters, and that this would be the last meal she shared with them.

Luck was with the princess too; by now the otters were quite anxious to try more of her food with onions, and although the vapors from the onion blurred the eyesight of those otters who were nearest to her work, their suspicions were lulled and they did not see what else she added.

A few spoonfuls only the princess took, and then the otters clamoured for their turn, and were just as argumentative as before.

"I am very tired from cooking, and your noise," the princess complained, and she made as if to lie down in the place where she had slept the last few nights, but she bundled up her blankets instead and made them into a heap. Quietly, then, the princess stole to the entrance to the den; the lark had untied her boat, and together they dragged it across the shore. All the otter heads were within the den, and there were none without to watch them go.

It is impossible to say what aroused them first: noticing that she had gone, or noticing that their body was queasy and distressed; but when a whistle came up from the otters' den, it was soft and distant and rivalled by the sea breeze that whipped around the travellers' ears.

"They may swim after us," the lark cautioned, "we are not out of danger yet. I think it will do them no good, but they will try."

"Let them try," the princess muttered, plying her pole with a will; but neither of them looked back, and they had no cause to. The bay was calm, and they had far to row.

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Once-Upon, Gehayi! This story is brought to you by otters ~~holding hands~~. 
> 
> Fun facts about otters:  
> -Otters have some of the highest metabolisms in the animal kingdom, and many species of otters eat around 25% of their body weight per day.  
> -Otters also have some of the densest fur in the animal kingdom. I couldn't think of a way to work that in, but I thought it was pretty neat.  
> -Some otter species (for example, the giant river otter) grow up to six feet long!  
> -Otters have pretty good eyesight! I suspect they wouldn't be as strongly affected as humans are by the irritants that onions produce, because otters have to use their eyes underwater, where all manner of irritants may be present, and this is something that is taxing on human eyes. But who knows - and also this is a fairy tale with magical monster otters, so what suits the story suits me. :)


End file.
